


Dulcis Domus

by notsoperfect



Category: Original Work
Genre: BFF’S, Brotherhood, Comedy, F/M, Family, Feminism, Fish out of Water, Football, Friendship, Funny, Gay, Humor, Later dark themes, M/M, New York, Private School, Romance, Sex, Sisterhood, Soccer, Sports, Teams, Travel, boys, bxb - Freeform, houses, mean boys, planes, rich kids, rich people, social ladder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:32:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8279584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsoperfect/pseuds/notsoperfect
Summary: Dulcis Domus, Sweet Home said the sign on the very front gate of her house, words that made her roll her eyes and curse all gods above for the death of her deranged moron of a father and his tendency to bring trouble to his family even when he was buried six feet under the ground, but with some time, a lot of pointless fights with egoistical rich kids, befriending a hoe (“Its HOH, Luke”) and looking out for her brother while trying to ignore the weird courting rituals of the said rich kids, she just might realize maybe, just maybe there is some truth to the corny Latin words after all.





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue

 

Despite the fact that their father just died, the kids went on with their lives without a single hitch in their daily routine.

 

It was a pretty big deal within a few hours after the news got out, which was the norm with most things related to Ashford Inc. And when one of the infamous Lionel Ashford’s handpicked drivers was shot dead by an Ashford issued weapon, it tended to make national headlines. It wasn’t exactly murder per say, the accurate term (as Lionel Ashford himself put it) was Experimental miscalculations and failure, which was just a fancy way of saying that her Ex-husband had stood at the wrong end of a gun as one of the Ashford Inc. goons showed off their new weapon at their latest Expo, the gun had misfired and instead of the target the bullet had choose to go for David Martinez’ chest.

 

So yeah, it was a pretty damn big deal and the media made it their life mission to make sure no one forgot about the once in a lifetime fuck up of a multinational corporations like Ashford Inc., well at least until the next big story came in or a celebrity got married or something, Anyway the point is that the news was splattered everywhere and anywhere and rumors of Ashford Inc getting sued for millions of dollars were spreading like wildfire despite the fact that David Martinez’ prevailing family members wanted nothing to do with him dead or alive, in fact the only worry she currently had was the media tracking Martinez’ family background to her kids and her kids getting abused by the media because of it.

 

Luckily enough being an emotionless alcoholic asshole had its perks and they couldn’t actually find much about him other than his DUI records and drinking habits, she is pretty sure that had more to do with Ashford’s PR team rather than her husband’s privacy skills. But whatever, she couldn’t care less, she and her kids were safe and away from privy eyes and that’s all that mattered. 

The kids had barley blinked an eye when they saw it on the TV; Wendell had muttered something about how it was about time, CJ just rolled his eyes at his older brother’s words but smiled and Luke had blinked and went back to finishing her breakfast still yawning away her sleep. Aisha didn’t know whether to be proud or disappointed at her children, proud because her kids were smart enough to realize how much of a moron her ex-husband was and not waste their emotions on him unlike she did for years and years, disappointed because despite everything he was their father and shouldn’t they have a better emotional range?, in the end she stuck to proud because David was a Giant Asshole (with a capital G and an A) and he did not deserve a drop of her or her children’s sadness.

 

That had been that and they had quickly left it behind them and moved on with their lives until the suited woman came into her bakery with a sympathetic fake smile and big annoying words that she couldn’t process amidst the afternoon rush in the Bakery, she had introduced herself as Carrie Hinberg, one of Lionel Ashford’s many lawyers. Understandably she had left Wendell in charge (despite her son’s tendency to get on the nerves of costumers) and went with her to talk expecting the very worst.

 

It had not been the very worst, well in her opinion that is, she was pretty sure CJ and Luke were going to be very much against that statement.

 

“No” Luke had said simply when she told them about the reason Carrie Hinberg and all her fake cheery self-had graced their ‘hole in the wall’ bakery. CJ had had a date when the Lawyer had come over and Luke had no choice but to drive him as CJ was just 15 and yet to obtain his license to his utter disappointment, Wendell was the only one who knew and he had kept on grinning and laughing knowing that his younger siblings were going to hate the news their mum had for them.

 

“It’s a really good opportunity, Lou” Aisha had replied to her only daughter with a sigh, they had just finished dinner and she had asked the kids to settle down in the kitchen to break the news.

 

“Wait, are you actually serious?” CJ asked his eyes open wide as he stared at her in shock; it always sucked to be the messenger of bad news.

 

“They want the both of you to go to a rich ass private school that the Ashford children attend as consolation for the death of our dear beloved father, what is so hard to grasp about that little bro?” Wendell answered as sarcastic as always, his eyes not leaving the screen of his phone and his fingers typing along with his words, and they said Men couldn’t multitask.

 

“Ah, the fact that it is half way across the country and full of rich white kids” CJ cried out dramatically, out of the 3 kids she raised, CJ was the only one with the teenage dramatic flair.

 

“Don’t be racist little bro, Rich people are not always white, rich people comes in all shape and sizes and in the rare occasions colors” Wendell added, Aisha decided to interject before the both of them would be at it again.

 

“It’s a really good school Hun, the best in the continent according to this pamphlet, its leading in every single aspect of education, sports, arts, science-everything, you could easily find a field you could go into. Kids from all across the world attends there, Colleges scouts for student instead of other way around and they are offering to pay every single penny for your education including a full ride to college of your choice, all you have to do is attend guys. And sure it’s a few miles away; you’ll have to stay in New York and wouldn’t be able to come home until like the winter break, and sure ill miss you and worry about you and it will be like I pushed my children out of the nest way too early, and I’ll be a horrible mum and-Oh Shit” she stops midway once she realizes what having them away would actually mean for her. She had never been away from her kids, not a day since Wendell was born and Wen attended community college that he could easily commute to and fro by staying at home.

 

“You lost your big pitch there Ma” Luke says breaking her out of her spiraling thoughts, Aisha looks at her daughter to see her smiling like she had already won this argument.

“I-I-It doesn’t matter-Just erase the last part, the point is you guys finally have a chance to get everything that I could not give you, Louie baby you can actually go to college, and a good one at it too and CJ will have a proper education and a good job and won’t ever have to even worry about college-“she starts determined to change her kids mind.

“Ma, not this again, I told you I don’t want to go to college, I am fine with working here in the bakery like Wen” Luke protests and Wendell snorts.

 

“You suck at working in the bakery; you can’t bake for shit, your social skills are terrible so you can’t work at the front either, you drive like a crazy person so delivery is not even an option, you once gave a homeless person 5 whole loafs of bread for free so clearly you can’t be in charge of the cash either, in short having you work here bring more loses that profit, So no way in hell are you working at the bakery” Wendell adds and even CJ who has been glowering at everyone since he heard the news manages a low smile at that.

 

“Hey, I am an amazing taste tester. And that homeless woman had a toddler and a dog, how can you say no to that, I am not heartless. My social etiquettes are wonderful thank you very much, besides the Bakery is family property so you can’t fire me” Luke counters with an indignant pout.

 

“Yeah, how could we possibly live without your taste buds” Wendell says sarcastically and before Luke can reply she gives both of them a stern stare that has them settling down again.

 

“You are not wasting your life away in here Luke, you have big things written for you” She tries again.

 

“And what Wendell has tiny things?-Oh god that sounded terrible-Anyway, it’s my choice mum, and I choose not to go to college” she says defiantly, not quite meeting her eyes because Luke knows that her mother can read right through her and Aisha would be able to read all the lies in her baby’s words. Luke always made her want to cut her chest open and hide her daughter in there and away from the world.

 

“You choose not to go to college because you know we can’t afford it. I went to college, and I chose to stay here because I knew I could make this place better with mum, because me and mom could afford the best for the both of you to go out to the world, and we couldn’t do that yet no matter how hard we tried. That’s why this opportunity is too damn good for you to just throw it away like that, for both of you” Wendell replies suddenly, in a rare occurrences that makes him sound like the 23 year old adult he is instead of a young teen like the others.

 

“Fine, then I’ll just directly go to college next year; we can skip the pretentious private school, why can’t I complete my senior year here and take the scholarship or bribery or whatever the hell that is when the time comes?” Luke asks and by the way she gives up too easy in the argument and the hint of hope in her voice Aisha knows that in spite of everything she said, the idea of a full ride to college would mean a lot to her.

 

“I tried to talk about it, but apparently it’s a package deal, something about needing a cause effective immediately” Aisha says and notes the disappointed sigh that her daughter tries to conceal.

 

“And we can’t afford college by ourselves” Wendell adds in again.

 

“It’s not like we are poor, our bakery is doing great, people drive hours to buy our pastries, you told me that Ma, we even had that celebrity come in that one time” CJ adds in hurriedly, his features wilting once he realizes that Aisha was serious.

 

“Nobody is belittling our shop CJ, we are doing great, great enough to have enough food in our fridge or buy a new car, not great enough to afford college for the both of you, and for once in his lifetime your moron of a father has finally done something good for you, Ashford is going to pay for everything you need, including the chance to study at where he and his kids had went to school and college. Who could possible give you all that?” Aisha tries.

 

“We don’t want their charity; he was nothing more than a sperm donor, they don’t owe us anything at all, we didn’t ask for anything Ma, if anything we all are just glad that he is dead” CJ cries out frustrated, his eyes having hardened and lips formed in a thin line which means her baby boy is seething with anger, which tend to happen whenever their dad comes up in a conversation, none of the three were found of their father, but nobody hated David Martinez as much as his youngest son.

 

“It’s hardly charity baby” she says as she walks over and sits next to her youngest son with an arm on his shoulder to comfort him, he barely reacts.

 

“They are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart CJ, they need to make a big show in front of the world about how much they have done to David Martinez’ family after their mistake, they want to turn all the bad press they have to good press so that their sales would be higher and their morality would be praised, if they privately settle us with money or just offered scholarships no one would know or it wouldn’t be soon enough to be important to them, so their solution is this big show by putting us in the same school the CEO’s kids go to” Luke explains with a resigned sigh, it always surprised her how smart she was, she had just summed up exactly what the Lawyer lady had tried to tell her subtly under large words and technical terms for more than 4 hours this afternoon, great things were destined for her daughter.

 

“They could hardly care about us, but hey when a golden opportunity comes knocking at our door- even though it’s intentions are not so good- you can’t just turn it away” Aisha tries explaining to her son whose eyes have hardened into a hateful glare once he realized that Luke was not putting up much of a fight.

 

“And She means it literally, like legally you can’t, I am pretty sure they will find some way to force us into taking the offer, they want their name cleared more than the both of you don’t want to go to this school” Wendell joins in.

 

“I miss the good old days when they just gave us money and said that they were sorry as consolation and that was that, this is just annoying” Luke says and mutters something about spending time with rich pretentions asshole surrounding her and how homicide seemed bright in her future.

 

“There is money, a sum with a large number of zeros, buts it all a mixed deal, I am pretty sure we could finally expand our bakery like 3 times bigger with that kind of money though” Wendell tries knowing that guilt tripping was the easiest way to get Luke to agree, she would do anything if it meant that the rest of them were well off, exhibit A would be pretending to not want to go to college so that CJ could in 3 years.

 

“Hey, no guilt tripping” she says anyway although Aisha knew that she had actually given in by that point and was actually worrying and muttering about all the horrible situations she would have to deal with, and to be honest she did have a point, they would suffer among people who were so high above the financial ladder to speak off. Aisha wasn’t that dumb and naïve to think that the whole world was loving, peaceful and dandy filled with rainbows and sunshine, her kids would be shunned and hated and made fun of, and they would have to suffer through it without their mom by their side, but besides that she knew that her children would get everything she ever wanted for them, and currently it seemed to trump over the few years of pain they would have to suffer at the said school before going off to college.

 

“No-Absolutely not” CJ shouts from her side all of a sudden snapping even Luke out of her self-pitying thoughts and internal swearing at rich kids.

 

“Luke can go if she wants to but there is no way that I am leaving. She only has a year left of school, she only has to suffer a year, I have 3-I am not going to spent my high school years with a bunch of rich stupid assholes, absolutely not!! And I have friends here, I have a girlfriend, I have a life here Ma! Luke is a total loner so nobody cares about her if she just up and left like that, she hasn’t got anything to lose but I do, I won’t leave, you can’t make me go to the fucking school alright” CJ shouts standing up from his spot, his eyes fuming.

“Camden James Kaseling” Aisha yells at his despicable behavior, he clearly was not giving in easy unlike his sister.

 

“I have friends, I have lots of friends-like bucket loads, if I could sell them I would be a millionaire” Luke says not exactly offended by her brother’s words, but somehow feeling the need to clarify it. Her brother doesn’t even pay a mind to her before storming away up the stairs and shutting the door harshly behind him.

 

“Wow, and I thought girls were meant to be dramatic” Wendell says after a second.

 

“Stop being sexist Wen, we all know how well you took it when Staci with an I dumped you before prom” Luke points out.

“Like an adult”

“You cried for a whole day not letting mom leave the room and when you did go to prom you ruined her dress by stepping on it, continuously until the poor girl cried” Luke deadpans.

“As I said, like an adult-No wonder you have no friends Luke, you are too busy bitching at everyone, poor CJ got the full name card even though he said the truth”

 

“I have friends, have you met me, I am amazing” she spluttered again.

“Acquaintances and lab partners does not classify as friends, the last time you brought a friend home was in freshmen year when you had to finish an assignment-“ Wendell countered and it continued as it was always in the home with 3 of them.

Aisha had half the mind to go after CJ, but then decided against it, knowing her boy he would probably be in his room talking to that girlfriend of his, a sweet rational headed girl he had been seeing for a few months, and despite everything else she knew that CJ would come around too despite his antics he knew how much this meant to her even though he was unaware of the importance to himself, and for his mother her sweet boy would do anything.

Aisha Kaseling loved her kids, she just hoped the world outside would show at least a percentage of that kindness towards them..


	2. Ch-1

Chapter-1

 

The first and foremost problem with attending a fancy ass school in New York (in a very HUGE list of problems, like 10 phone books joined together kind of list) was simply the getting to New York part itself. New York seemed to be light-years away from their small town of Adamsville, Oregon, which was just an exaggerated way of telling that it was more than 5 and a half hours journey via a plane and she didn’t even want to think of driving all the way there.

 

CJ seems adamant on reminding everyone of this fact with timing of the journey increasing by 10 minutes every time he repeated his observation, currently her brother was somewhere between 10 hours and 15, she wasn’t sure, she had gotten pretty tired of hearing the same argument over and over again. Luke was not ashamed to admit that she had been the first one to give in to her mother’s wishes, that woman had raised her single handedly for 17 years okay, when she looks at you with the face that said she was disappointing the whole world even super villains would turn good and resort to a life of saving puppies and cleaning the park, unlike CJ and all his teenage pent up hormones Luke did not have the resolve to argue with her mother regardless of all her newly arisen list of problems (Ginormous list, like King Kong). 

 

And for once the financial aspect of the journey was not the problem; Ashford Inc. meant it when they said that they were paying for every single part of their education, apparently transport was also included in that, hell they were sending a private jet to pick them up, the problem itself was of two parts, the first being that they had only gotten on a plane once, when she was 6 years old and a much shorter one to LA and not half way across the world (read other side of the country) they had even driven back to Oregon because 4 year old CJ had been hell on toddler legs throughout the journey on the plane, she is pretty sure her asshole father would have gone to some pretty drastic measure to shut him up if it weren’t for the glaring Wendell and the Sweet flight attenders watching him, maybe that’s the reason the said asshole father didn’t come back after dropping them back into their mom’s sweet arms, if it was she was forever grateful for annoying Toddler CJ.

 

The Second part is that apparently they would be traveling with the Ashford Children or child considering only one was currently attending high school because they were spending the summer in London or Japan or whatever (rich kids, why the fuck not right?) and it was just easier to pick her and CJ up on the way as if it was easy as carpooling to school and not travelling via a effing private plane through the country.

 

Luke knew that was bullshit of course, she is pretty sure Ashford was rich enough to afford more than 1 private jet and nobody needed to be ‘picked up’ on the way, they were doing this whole thing for the cameras because when they do land the media will have these beautiful pictures of Lionel Ashford’s poor Driver’s even poorer kids bonding with his own children on their way to the rich ass private school Ashford was paying for, which would make a wonderful story and they could leave the whole mess of her father’s untimely death behind, never mind the fact his kids did not even attend the moron’s funeral or even imply they even liked him (they did not, they very much did not like him) to warrant such gracious offer, people were stupid, Luke knew better than to question it.

 

“Well, this is going to be fun” Wendell proclaims happily from the driver’s seat once they pull up at the Airport. Wendell had done nothing but grin and laugh and tease throughout the month once they heard the news, she and CJ had been so mad at him that they chose to sit in the backseat and pretend Wen is their driver and not talk a word to him throughout the whole journey to the airport. If he continues to be a smug asshole CJ is going to punch him, and she will help, she will definitely help.

 

“Oh come on, don’t be so sore. Look at the both of you flying across the country with your soon to be best friend to stay at your new fancy boarding school” he teases as he gets no reply and Luke curses all gods above for making him 6 years older than her and thus escaping the torture they have to go through.

 

“I swear to god Wen, I will punch you, Ma is not here to stop me” CJ spits out voicing her thoughts, she had never felt this level of comradeship with CJ, its worrying,

 

Their Ma had wanted to come, but then again she didn’t do well when cramped in small spaces for a long time and it was almost an hour ride to Portland which had the nearest airport and most of all if their mom was present there would be tears with their goodbye, and fuck if Luke lets anyone but her family see her tears, she sure as hell was not crying in front of an airport, so they had hugged for 5 minutes in front of their bakery and although their mom did shed a tear or two between all the orders to call every single day and video chat and be good, their frustration with the situation had helped them hold back their tears, maybe Luke might have cried a bit in the shower this morning when she realized she had to leave, but that’s no one’s business but hers.

 

“Oh, somebody is angry. But come on guys, you already met them once, remember?” Wendell asks and Luke groans as one of her worst memories resurfaces again.

 

It was kind of ironic how her first non-voluntarily flight trip with their father ended up with the 3 of them spending a weekend with the Ashford children, and her second involuntary flight caused by the said asshole of a father was going to be with them too.

 

“I was like 3, I don’t even remember” CJ grumbles out, his eyes still unrelenting in his glare.

 

“I bet Luke remembers, don’t’cha Lucy” Wen turns to her with his eyes glinting with all the mirth of a demon. Luke hated it when he called her Lucy, mainly because Wendell had told everyone Lucy stood for Lucifer when she was younger and could not talk for herself, he was 7. That statement itself proves how much she just loves her older brother.

 

“I remember that it was one of the worst weekends of my childhood and that CJ was an annoyingly loud toddler who our dear father would have most likely drowned if there weren’t other people around” Luke replies as she tries to replicate CJ’ eyes as retribution for the patronizing nick name.

 

“I am glad, asshole deserves all the pain in the world” CJ murmurs in such a hushed voice that Luke wouldn’t have caught it if she wasn’t sitting so close to him.

 

“Oh come on, you know what I am talking about. Mini Ashford had refused to let you leave and even tried locking you in his room” Wendell says ignoring CJ (read completely agreeing with him, but doesn’t actually want to voice it out), his eyes do a little wiggly thing at the end that has Luke looking at her older brother weirdly.

 

“Oh that shindig, that was nothing and you are totally exaggerating, all I remember is ruining the kid’s homework to be honest” She replies with a shrug because despite all the crazy tales her brother had told her of that day while growing up about their impromptu trip with their deranged father as he tried to pretend to be a good man, she doesn’t have much memories other than splattering paint across the pudgy looking boy’s books and something about him feeding her cake, in her defense she was six and was kind of busy looking out for baby CJ and making sure father dear didn’t kill him.

 

It says a lot about the kind of man David Martinez was because that horrible trip was one of the only memories she had of her father, and when you compare it to the other memories of her mom kicking him out of the house or him pushing Wendell into the coffee table, she has no choice but to say that was the best memory she had of her father. The said trip had happened when he managed to get a job as Ashford’s driver and did something good that Ashford decided to let him stay in a guest house at one of his mansion, he had dragged the 3 of them away for ‘father bonding experience’ by threatening her sick mother about custodial rights and law suits, and that was at a time they could barely afford the apartment they were staying at so her Ma had no choice but to let the kids go with him with a promise to return them back in one piece.

 

“You were best friends, they guy literally force fed you stuff and all and glared at anyone else who talked to you, it was very cute and you know possessive for a 10 year old” Wendell interjects her inner hateful monologue of her father.

 

They had met the Ashford kids by chance, she remembers someone telling her something about their mother’s death and keeping them out of the media by hiding out in one of their ‘lesser known’ mansions. They hadn’t been best friends as Wendell put it, the girl Ashford had taken one look at them and never turned back, but the boy Ashford though, he had apparently kept her company even though he was closer in age to Wendell than her. Despite the exaggerated stories from Wendell all Luke did remember was a dark haired boy glaring at all of them hatefully, so when someone had given her some paint and a paper and the paper had run out she had done the rational thing any six year old would, she had walked over to the glaring kid and started drawing in his books, how was she supposed to know that was important? Wendell said that their father had an aneurysm when he found her like that, but the kid had took it well for some god damn reason, and to be honest that’s all she remembers and not the twisted versions of her older brother. And if she has learned anything in life, it’s not to trust her brother

 

“Who the fuck are you two even talking about” CJ complains clearly feeling left out from the conversation, the unnecessary swearing is brought on by his anger at the situation and the lack of the presence of their mother, CJ was unbearable without their mother around, god she is going to have to deal with him now, another reason in her Godzilla sized list of reasons she doesn’t want to go to New York. 

 

“Alexander Ashford, the first and probably the only guy who liked Luke” Wendell smirks.

 

If it was a normal day and their impending doom was not waiting for them CJ would join in with Wen in his teasing because her brothers had the mental maturity of 10 year olds, and Luke would roll her eyes and contemplate if her mom’s wrath was worth hitting them both on the head with a bat, but alas, it is not and their impending doom was in fact waiting for them in front of the airport in the form of the Lawyer Lady (Carrie Hinberg, her mom had reminded her although Luke was unable to call her anything other than Lawyer lady), so CJ stays quite, just glares harder at Wendell and Wendell finally stops smirking realizing that they would in fact most likely punch him if his smugness continued on.

 

“The Lawyer Lady is waving at us, I think she finally spotted us” Luke informs her brothers with the disappointment and sadness in her voice more obvious than CJ’s fuming anger.

 

“Can’t we just stay here and not go out?” CJ whines again, sounding like the internal scared 5 year old boy he is.

 

“It’s going to be fine guys, I promise” Wendell reassures as he unlocks the door making Luke internally cry because this means she will have to leave.

 

Wendell is the first one to get out of the car and get their bags out because he knew she and CJ would try to stall the incoming for as long as possible. The Lawyer Lady smiles, flips her blonde curls from her shoulder and walks over to them with all the finesse of a Lawyer, seriously the woman looked like the very profession of Law personified.

 

“Come on Dufus, get out, staying in the car is not going to help” Wendell calls out to them and Luke takes a look at CJ sitting next to her, looking very much close to tears and decides that she will have to be the rational one (as always) and gets off the car first, CJ slowly (very slowly) following behind her.

 

“Hello, the day is finally here-Ah, How amazing right! You guys excited or what” Lawyer Lady greets them with a fake cheery smile and a high pitched squeal that makes Luke wants to run and hide.

 

“Elated” Luke spits out the words will all the sarcasm her gangly body can muster up, it seems Lawyer lady finally does catch on because her cheery smile falls for a second before fake smile number 2 takes its place. Fake smile number 2 means she is going to lie through her teeth and make it all sound believable.

“So, Miss Ashford is super excited though, she is absolutely wonderful, you guys are going to get along like a house on fire, two young ladies of the same age, oh I bet the both of you will have the same classes, wouldn’t that be fun. The jet just landed and she is so excited to meet you, so we will have to hurry along a bit” she says and adds a completely pointless laugh at the end that had Luke cringing.

Luke had half a mind to tell her that a house on fire usually ends in crashing and burning, but realizes that the Lawyer lady’s poor fake smile’s possible could not deal with those so she resorts to intentionally taking as long as possible to get her bags and luggage in order, making sure they were late, CJ takes even longer than her.

 

“Hurry along now” Lawyer Lady rushes once they finally do have their baggage, getting impatient by every minute CJ and Luke tries to lag.

“Let me say goodbye to my baby siblings” Wendell said in a voice that said that there was nothing more to argue and Lawyer Lady makes a deep gutted voice.

“Fuck off” CJ murmurs as Wendell pulls both of them into a hug, but he doesn’t actually push away Wendell either, instead CJ just shifts closer to the asshole who has been making fun of them all month, Luke too grudgingly wraps the arm that is not occupied by her shoulder bag around him.

“I mean it you know, you are going to be fine, anybody who tries to hurt the two of you will have to go through me okay? Nothings gonna happen to you, I promise” He tells them with such sincerity that makes Luke burrow her head deeper into his chest and never leave.

“But you are going to be so far away” CJ murmurs without all the anger and Luke hears his voice crack as her own eyes get wider and wetter with unshed tears she had been desperately attempting to hold back.

 

“I am going to be right there, you should know that, and if anything does happen you can contact Carrie, Right Carrie?” her brother repeats, the last part a little louder so that even Carrie would hear.

After they break apart Luke sees Lawyer Lady nod, for once not sporting a fake smile as she stares at her brother. Her brother smiles as he wipes at his eyes before Luke can see them.

“Take care of each other okay?” he asks them sternly and they both nod as Lawyer lady rushes them. Luke stares at her brother one last time before he disappears from her line of sight.

“Love you, Louie” he mouths and she tries her very best not to run back to him and put up a tantrum, she has to be the rational one after all…

 

*******************

 

“Where the hell were you? I have been waiting for hours. Is it so hard to pick up some tramps on the way? I don’t even know why I have to deal with this shit” 

This is what greets them when they enter into the plane after all the documents are sorted, Luke is not sure whether it is the harshness of the words or the high pitch that makes CJ shift closer to her and grip her elbow for dear life.

 

“She is absolutely wonderful” Luke mouths Lawyer Lady’s earlier words silently to her brother and although there is no outer reaction she knows her brother is internally smiling by the way his forehead relaxes. He doesn’t let go of her elbow though.

The Lawyer Lady actually looks ashamed as she removes the curtain thingy from the door thingy of the flight to reveal what looks like a polished hall with soft couches and tiny windows, and of course the fuming brunet girl in the green dress that probably cost more than their whole house. For her part she actually looks a little taken back by seeing the said ‘tramps’ but does not relent on her stance.

 

“I-I am sorry Miss Ashford, these two are the Kaselings, this is-“ Lawyer Lady starts but is interrupted with an icy look.

 

“I can introduce myself, please take a seat” Ashford says turning towards the two of them and although she says please, it feels more like a command and normally Luke would say something back but she doesn’t want to piss these people of this early on so she obeys and drags along a glaring CJ too.

 

Out of nowhere two flight attendants come and pick up their bags for them and place them in the compartment above their seats.

 

“Thank you” Luke says loudly to them just to show Ashford that people have something called manners and basic decency which she seems to be lacking. One of the flight attended guy smiles at her kindly before leaving, after another icy pointed look from the Ashford demon even Lawyer lady scoots away to take a seat further away, Luke never thought she would ever miss the Lawyer lady’s presence.

 

“Marylyn Ashford, no you are not allowed to call me Mary or Lyn, my name is Marylyn and if by some unfortunate moment you have to address me-which I sure as hell hope the both of you avoid- it better be Marylyn, I will not stand well to pointlessly stupid nicknames, I am saying this in case your dumb country brain thinks everyone is your ‘pal’ or ‘sis’ or whatever” she says in lightning speed shattering all of Luke expectations that maybe she won’t be as much of a bitch as she expected, in fact Marylyn Ashford is exceeding in the bitchiness scale Luke just developed.

 

Then she looks at the both of them expectantly and realizes she is waiting for them to introduce themselves, CJ looks too intimidated and if he does say anything she is pretty sure he will intentionally use the words ‘Mary’, ‘Lyn’ and even ‘Sis’ and ‘Pal’ which Luke thinks she has never uttered in her life. Luke personally has half a mind to introduce herself as the ‘tramps’ she just referred to, but then she remembers that she promised her Ma that she would try, and god damn it why is her mom such a good effing person.

 

“I am Luke, and this is CJ. It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you” Luke replies sarcastically, trying her very best to stop there, CJ seems to finally relax at her side though.

It seems Marylyn’s ingenious city brain did not catch the dripping sarcasm though, because she unlocks her phone and decides looking at the screen is better than looking at them while holding a conversation, impeccable manners; people should take notes.

“Luke is a weird name for a girl” she replies absent mindedly, her eyes still on her phone.

“We survive” CJ answers hotly before she can and that actually earns them a short glare from demon Ashford before she is back to staring at her phone screen again.

“It’s a modified version of Luce” Luke replies anyway, just to show demon Ashford how kindness works.

“So your name is Lucille, or Lucinda or something, not Luke” she replies. It’s not, but Luke has no intention of correcting her.

 

Whatever I don’t care, my maid tells me that we have met long ago, but I like to pretend we don’t so please don’t go sprouting about how we knew each other when we were toddlers, I don’t even remember any of you” She says next.

 

“It would be a struggle with all the amazing memories we had, but I think we can manage” Luke replies sarcastically as always because fuck being nice, the girl is getting on her nerves and she is going to have the worst year on earth anyway, she doesn’t care if she offends her nonexistent sensibility.

 

“Ugh, Whatever-Listen I don’t like this whole chit chat thing and honestly I don’t have the time for it, so this is how it’s going to go. When we land, there are going to be press there, we smile and that’s it, no holding hands, not speaking to each other, don’t even walk next to me despite what anyone would say, we smile and that’s it. And once we do get to Eddridge Academy you both never even knew me, I am a Crusadious okay, you shouldn’t bother to talk with me because we are not friends, we are not acquaintances, we don’t even know each other at all, you are just the charity case my father is sponsoring and that’s the end of that, I can’t afford to lose my rep because of you. So stay away from me. Got it” she rushes out with all the likeness of a predator talking to its prey, and before they can even process her words she is getting off her seat and leaving through another curtain thingy, to what she guesses is her private seat? Or maybe her demon lair, she looks like the kind of person to have a demon lair.

 

Luke looks at CJ to see him wearing the same confused angry look Luke herself has on.

“That’s what we have to look forward to” He notes with all the enthusiasm of a dead fish, Luke gives him the best smile she can afford at the moment.

He has a point though; Luke had no idea how the hell they are going to survive. That’s the only thing on her mind as she watches her home fade away from her sight as the plane ascends into the atmosphere…


	3. Ch-2

Chapter-2

 

Luke isn’t able to enjoy much of the plane ride over to New York because she falls asleep half an hour after they take off, she had planned to stay awake, look around because as her mother says golden opportunities right? And as long as demon Ashford didn’t return Luke would have been in an alright mood, at least just to keep an eye on CJ. 

CJ wakes her up once they have landed and she has no idea what he had done for the whole flight, hopefully not something too horrible in his passive aggressiveness. She has a few minutes to get her bearings and straighten out her sleep rumbled shirt before she is being rushed out of the plane and is greeted to the evening sky of New York, there are a surprising amount of people waiting for them but she can only point out a few camera flashes in her sleepy brain.

She instantly shift closer to CJ when surrounded with so many strange people and CJ in turn grips her tighter, obviously sharing her discomfort, then there is a lot of shaking hands and people telling her and CJ how sorry they are for them, and how her father was such a nice man that Luke actually wonders if they got the wrong man and wrong children, for a second she kind of desperately hopes they did just so she can go home to her mom and brother.

 

She knew that if her father had dropped dead under normal circumstances Ashford wouldn’t even have bothered with a call to inform them of the man’s death, but no that asswipe had to get murdered by Ashford’s weapon in a very non flattering way that made the company look like incompetent blubbering idiots. 

 

The hand shaking and sympathizing pats continue on but she can barely process half the words they are saying because she is still in her sleepy daze despite the crazy levels of discomfort she is in with suited men surrounding her and her poor brother who looks way out of line when surrounded by them, then there are some posing for photos and finally their Lawyer Lady comes to the rescue and rushes them away.

 

Its only when she is safely deposited into a limo with her brother that the sleep actually fades, luckily enough only the Lawyer Lady gets in with them, which is a huge internal sigh of relief because she would have done unspeakable things if she had to share close quarters with Marylyn again. It’s at that thought she is reminded of the fact she hadn’t smiled, hell she hadn’t even thought about demon Ashford as she was too busy being crowded by suited men (and Maybe a women or two, she doesn’t quite remember).

 

“You alright?” CJ asks after a few minutes, blinking at her worriedly and wow, she hadn’t expected that look out of CJ, he gave their mom that look a lot though it’s the ‘I am worried about you and I will die if you are hurt, so please don’t be hurt’ look, she never thought she’d get that from CJ who preferred to yell and tease her rather than you know be concerned about her, which is just ew.

“Yeah, Yeah-I am good” Luke lies easily with a comforting pat on his knee.

“So that was fun wasn’t it?” Carrie asks interrupting them and they both give her the best bitch faces they can because they are not dealing with her fake cheeriness no matter how relived her presence instead of Marylyn’s makes he feel, she is the lesser of two devils, at least this one tries and smiles even though its 200% fake.

 

Carries doesn’t bother with conversation after that, the rest of the ride passes fairly in silence other than the radio that is playing some random song. Luke and CJ tries their best not to gape out of the window like a dog as they see the city for the first time in their life, despite all the list of shitty things she will have to deal with this year the view is surly on the plus side, and under all the wonder and excitement of their eyes chasing after huge skyscrapers and building’s its almost easy to forget about the fact that she is terribly missing her Ma even though it hasn’t even been half a day since she left.

 

“Aren’t we going to the school?” Luke wonders out loud once she realizes that the limo they were in was pulling into a less building-y area and more of what seemed like a castle.

“Oh-No No, Mrs. Ashford insisted that you join her for dinner, that way you guys can relax today at the Ashford Estate and get used to the jet lag before heading to school tomorrow with Miss Marylyn. Don’t worry she is a nice woman” Lawyer Lady informs and Luke fights the urge to groan out loud, CJ actually does do just that.

“Just like Marylyn is wonderful?” Luke asks and Carrie had the audacity to look ashamed.

“Okay, that might have been bit of a stretch. But Annalise Ashford is a much better woman, she’s the woman who greeted you today at the airport with Mr. Ashford, don’t you remember?” Carrie asks and CJ and Luke share a look that says exactly how much attention they had paid to those people. She remembers Lionel Ashford, a gruff old man with a stern voice and that was about it, she thought that’s all that mattered.

 

“Never mind, you’ll meet her properly this time and trust me she is a lot better than her step daughter, tons better than the previous Mrs. Ashford at least, that one had been a giant headache” Carrie murmurs once she realizes they had no idea who she is talking about, by the end of it, It seems she is talking more to herself than them though.

“How many times had the guy been married?” Luke wonders.

 

“4 last I heard, the kids belong to number one though, she passed away years ago, the others barley lasted six months before the divorce paperwork started, this one is the longest so far though, fairly nice compared to the other two I knew” Carrie gossips and Luke finally sees something of a real person behind all the fake smiles.

 

“Wait was she the blonde one who said the asshole was one of the nicest men she ever met?” CJ inquires, suddenly joining into their conversation. Luke snorts out loud at her brother’s words.

 

She didn’t know if David Martinez had a sudden change of heart or something but when she knew him he was the furthest thing she knew from the word nice, there was a picture of him somewhere in a sections named the worst fucking morons of the world, ‘Nice’ should not even some within 50 feet within that guy. But she figured the Woman probably never even knew him just like the rest of the lot and was just blubbering out something to sound like she cared, Luke and CJ would like them tons better if the honestly said that they didn’t care.

 

“Yeah, that is the one. Forgive me for asking but I am not really getting good vibes from you two about your father, is there something-“ Carrie starts of but leaves it at that giving them the choice to answer in a way they found comfortable rather than ask them a solid question. It seems the sudden burst of gossiping had made her comfortable enough to ask questions that are not tightly interlinked to her job.

 

“Let’s just say that man is the reason we all have trust issues, specifically against men” Luke replies in the best way she knows with the devilish smile that held more pain than humor as she chooses to focus her gaze back to the slowly halting outside world.

“He is nothing more than a sperm donor” CJ adds soon after, his words intense. 

 

“He means it literally, a year after he and our mom got married my older brother was born, he left when she was 7 months pregnant without a freaking note, almost half a decade later when our grandparents passed away and our mom couldn’t possibly be more helpless he comes back full of bullshit and 9 months later I was born, my mom likes to call those months ‘a rough patch’ which translates to a fucking abusive relationship, this time he stuck around till he got the chance to name me then bailed soon after, 2 and half years later he comes back again and when our mom didn’t take his shit-he-he…” Luke abruptly cuts off her rant realizing where her words were heading towards and the fact her chest was feeling so heavy with burning range all of a sudden.

 

“You can say it you know, he raped our mom, this time he ran away before he even realized mom was pregnant with his fucking collateral damage” CJ spits out, his eyes welling up and Luke instantly goes for his hands, there are a lot of words she wants to tell her brother, words her mom had been telling him since he realized how he was conceived and felt guilty every second since then, but Carrie is still a stranger, the only reason they were telling her any of this is because she was the familiar stranger, the only person they actually had in this strange town to look out for them, because everybody around them was glorifying this asshole and it was only fair that at least one person knew what kind of a monster he actually was.

 

“Cam, you know it’s not like that. Ma loves you more than anyone else in the world” Luke whispers to him, but CJ just shrugs her hands away before continuing on.

 

“It doesn’t end there though, we moved away but he found us again, this time he came back for his kids, threatened our mom but could barely last a weekend with us, so he went to torture our mother again expect this time Wendell broke a vase in his head and we got a restraining order” CJ completes.

The car finally pulls up but no one makes an effort to get off from the car even though she can see other few similar limos pulling up and their patrons exiting into the large wooden doors of the said Ashford Estate.

 

“Oh I am so sorry-I-I-The restraining order never came up in any of the-“Carrie starts awkwardly, her eyes suddenly holding much more sincerity.

 

“Mom dropped it before it was filed, she was afraid he would take action against Wendell, but that was all like a decade ago, he never came back” Luke answers realizing CJ had went still again.

“That’s why you guys hate this whole thing, because you got it out of an abusive asshole of a father. I-I am sorry” she repeats out loud and Luke can do nothing other than shrug at her words, because everyone is sorry for them, but being sorry is never actually enough and Luke had learned to live with that by this point.

 

“He is not our father” CJ says before he unlocks the door and gets off, Luke lets out a frustrated sigh before following after him. This time Carrie helps them get their bags and even drop them of at their respective rooms in the large mansion even though a few of the workers in the mansion had already rushed to their side. Their Lawyer Lady only leaves after saving her number in both of their phones and reassuring them that they could call her at any second.

 

She hates getting pity because her father was an asshole, but considering that she is stuck in strange place full of people who seems to be wearing fake facades and rude gestures whatever kindness she can sense is appreciated, So Luke accepts her offer and even manages a genuine smile towards the older woman.

 

Luke gets enough time to take a long shower, in where she contemplates most of her life choices and thinks about the very depressing future ahead of her if Marylyn was anything to go by. The bathroom is just as luxurious and elegant as the rest of the Estate, but Luke doesn’t marvel much on it mainly due to her anxiety about the new school and also just genuine lack of interest at the moment.

 

By the time she gets dressed, a butler (she thinks it’s a butler, Ashford’s could have butlers right? Like Bruce Wayne) informs her kindly that dinner will be served in an hour, which gives her enough time to flop down on her bed and groan into the pillow like she had desperately wanted to from the second she saw demon Ashford and realized how depressing her final year of high school was going to be, as the cherry in the topping it seems like they are going to deal with her and CJ like charity cases. 

She lays there starfished on the overly comfy bed and tries her very best not to scream or cry because she is missing her family so much and the impromptu story time about her sperm donor had made her feel even worse (as most things concerned with David Martinez was). She stares at the ceiling and the chandelier hanging from it (why the hell is there a chandelier in the guest room? who does that? actually what even is the point of chandeliers other than reminding her than it could fall any second due to an earthquake or a loose bolt and come plummeting down to her death, and she will be pinned down in blood and glass bits, what a terrible way to die) for another good 10 minutes before deciding to gather her bearings and call Wendell.

She doesn’t go for her Ma knowing that CJ must already be on phone with her, she could just walk across the hall where CJ’s assigned room is but she is feeling a bit lightheaded and does not want her brother to see that she is actually terrified and panicking, because after all he had a point she only has to suffer a year of this, CJ has 3, if he sees her freaking out he’ll act out even more and probably set fire to the place or something.

So she rings up Wendell even though she already knew all Wen was gonna do was tease her or gloat about how amazing the house is when the both of them weren’t’ there, but she is desperately seeking for a rope of familiarity and if bantering with Wendell was what it is, she was gonna go for it, no matter how degrading that was. They talk for a few minutes, and of course there is the usual banter but other than that she fills him in on all that happened and they both discuss about the annoying time differences, Wen assures her that they’ll get sorted enough to find a time where both half’s of their family will be awake and free to talk, then there is the usual jittering because if Wendell was not being an annoying little idiot it meant something was seriously wrong.

 

By the time she hangs up (after talking to her mother too, because there is good chance she wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise) there is only a few more minutes till dinner was meant to be served, for a second she thinks of not going, she could probably lie about a headache or something. She didn’t feel like sitting with a bunch of strangers but then her stomach groans and she is reminded of the fact that she hasn’t eaten in at least 10 hours, so despite her discomforts she gets up from her spot in the bed and straightened up.

 

She puts on the best plaid shirt and the newest jeans she had as not to look like an idiot (she was pretty sure she would manage to look like an idiot among them anyhow). She has a feeling her clothing was going to be made fun of a lot in the next year at Eddridge Academy, her closet consists of a lot of flannel and plaid shirts and a few pairs of jeans not very jaw dropping or feminine for that matter, and in her defense she had grown up in Wendell’s hand me downs, worn and used to the point that the strings were falling out and its exactly for that reason those cloths were so damn comfortable, so when it came to her turn of shopping she made a point of picking out the most comfortable stuff and looking good was only like the 5th factor in her factors of choosing cloths, most of her cloths were brought from Target or Wen’s old ones, she owns nothing that cost more than 50 dollars or has a guy’s name on it, hell the only designer brand she has is a pair of Nike sneaker that too once belonged to Wendell.

 

She even braids her hair so it won’t look like she had just been rolling around in their fancy thick bed (which she has), but it still manages to be angled in at least 36 directions, her hair was messy like that, she had given up on it long ago when she was 12 and asked her mother whether she could just chop it off, her mother had almost cried because she had had her grandfather’s hair, Luke had resigned to live a life of messy hair after that.

By the time Luke gets out of her room CJ is waiting for her despite her worries of him bailing on her and leaving her all alone with those sharks, he even cleaned up, wearing a shirt instead of that hideous hoodie (she is pretty sure she has a similar hoodie somewhere).

“Do we really have to do this?” he asks with his eyes resembling a petulant puppy. Luke would love nothing more than to say No and make plans to run away from there, but no her deranged father left her no choice.

“I am hungry” she says instead and that actually earns her a smile.

This time when she places a hand on his shoulder he doesn’t shrug her away, Luke takes that as a win as their butler (or maid, what is the male version of a maid, man servant, maiden? Wait, that was feminine too, Luke was gonna stick with butler because that just sounded cooler and you know more Batman-ish) returns to lead them to the dining room.

 

The dining room too is all Disney princess esque as the rest of the house, more like the ball room in all those princess movies than actually a dining room, they haven’t even had a dining room back home, just a kitchen/living area and a bunch of bedrooms. Despite her worries, the room regardless of its size and splendor is pretty empty other than the large amount of food placed on the table.

 

The first person to greet them is a blonde woman who she guesses is Mrs. Ashford, her assumptions are proved right once she introduces herself and politely asks them to take a seat at the glimmering table.

The woman is at least a decade younger than Mr. Ashford, and has a billion times more kindness and manners than her step daughter.

Which, thinking of the devil…

“Ah, Marylyn glad you could finally join us dear” Mrs. Ashford greets and Marylyn looks like she would rather be anywhere but there and continues to scowls as she takes a seat opposite to Mrs. Ashford and furthest away from the two of them.

Luke wonders how much of a bad person she is if she admits that seeing Marylyn’s annoyed features actually make her feel a little better about the whole situation, at least CJ and her won’t be the only ones miserable, seems pretty fair if you ask her.

 

The next person to join them is their Lawyer Lady Carrie who apologizes profusely for her lateness before taking a seat next to CJ with a warm smile directed at the two of them, by this point Luke is not ashamed to admit how much her presence seems to relax them, as she said a familiar stranger and all that shit.

She is relived when Mrs. Ashford directs them to dig in, mainly because this means nobody else will be joining them and she couldn’t finally start eating, not to seem eager but she is starving.

“So tell me, what are your interests?” Mrs. Ashford inquires once they have managed to take few good bites of their meal and a comfortable silence has set over them, at least Marylyn hadn’t looked at her so far and when you ignore that headache the room is kind of peaceful, and the food is pretty good too despite all her jokes about rich people eating sea weed and fish eggs so she doesn’t really have a lot to complain about.

 

Luke turns to CJ hoping he would take the lead as she didn’t have lot to brag about academically or not so academically, but it seems communication is not in her brother’s agenda for the day because he pretends like he didn’t even hear the question, his gaze focused laser sharp on his food and not chocking on his chicken, asshole, she will have to deal with that later.

 

“CJ is pretty good at the whole science aspects; he won the county science fair 3 years in a row and he is in the track team?” Luke answers once she swallows her food, the last part coming out more as question because all she knew was CJ did sports but not the specifics, their old high school didn’t shed light on the whole sports aspect, there was just the usual gym class and teams but they didn’t have lot of matches.

“Swim Team” CJ corrects with a glare, Luke glares right back because if he cared so much he should have answered the question himself instead of letting her deal with it.

 

“Yeah that” Luke corrects sheepishly but Mrs. Ashford grins at the both of them.

 

“Don’t worry Eddridge has a long list of sport teams, from cricket to net ball so you can choose anything you want and even follow a career in that if you are willing, most of our teams makes it to nationwide games, We even had a few Olympians, one even in my year -It’s pretty exciting” Mrs. Ashford says elegantly taking a bite out of her plate.

“Oh, you went to there too?” Luke asks just for the sake of making conversation, she pointedly does not use the name of her new school.

“Oh Yes-A proud Zxenna here” she gleams at the two of them pointing to her elegant blue dress. She must have caught on to their clueless expression because thay had no idea what on earth a Zxenna was, is that like a disease you overcome? A sports team?.

 

“Oh-I thought Marylyn would have told you all about the house system, Didn’t you Mare?” She asks and Luke tries her very best not to snort at that, she doesn’t know whether it’s because of the fact Mrs. Ashford assumed that her step daughter would be kind enough to have civil conversation or Marylyn’s preferred pet name was ‘Mare’, like a horse, despite her best attempts she does manage a smug smile at ‘Mare’s distraught looking face.

 

“Must have slipped my mind, I am afraid” she lies through pointed teeth, and looks at that, there is person she actually respects in the world. She would have assumed Marylyn was a bitch to her step mother too.

“Yes, with all the wonderful other topic we talked about” Luke can’t help but mummer out sarcastically, mainly hoping just CJ or even Carrie would be the auditors to her natural sarcasm, but with the pointed glare Marylyn gives her, it was pretty loud, Luke just gives her the best devilish smile that made her Ma always keep an extra eye on her.

 

“Not to worry, Ah it just gives me the opportunity to do the honors I guess, how exciting!! I never had the opportunity to brag about Eddridge, youngest of the lot that’s me. Okay, we have got this amazing housing division system, 7 houses and its according to these houses that your boarding and all the other activates expect classes work, its bit like the frats and sororities in college just a lot better and tons more awesome, I am saying that as an alumni of Delta Kappa Nu so let’s keep it between us okay. Haha. Everything is evaluated on the basis of the houses and by the end of the year the house with the highest score gets the prestigious House of the Year Trophy, to win a trophy is such an honor, so everything is a competition, the dorms, the sports, the teams, the academics. And the parties, Ohh the parties are pretty amazing. Do Aphora still throw the best parties? Or does Igneous scoop over that category too?-Oh, Sorry I am getting way head of myself again” Mrs. Ashford says, the calm and elegant exterior popping for a second as she gets excited, luckily she stops for a sip of water, or whatever it is that she is drinking.

 

“Anyway as I was saying there are 7 houses; Igneous-Who has been winning the HOY trophy for quite a while now, Mare’s Crusadious, My own Zxenna, Aurioum-which is all boys, Aphora-which is in turn all girls, Callisets and Magnium, The Ashford line had been strictly limited to Crusadious for the past decade, which is sad considering Zxenna is the best house” Mrs. Ashford says a with a playful smile towards Marylyn.

 

“Zxenna hadn’t won the House of The year trophy in the past 20 years Anna” Marylyn cuts in, it’s a bit surprising to see genuine interest in her words without the bitchy demeanor, in fact Luke remembers her telling something about being Crusadious, that shit must mean something to them then.

 

“Igneous has been winning the trophy for years, and you constantly tell me how they are all horrible, similarly just because we don’t win the HOY a lot doesn’t mean that we aren’t the best house, we have the sense of team and joy of friendship coursing through our veins. Marylyn is meant to be the Head of House for Crusadious this year, that’s why she is so defensive” she informs them proudly and Luke can do nothing but nod along.

 

All she understood was there was some Hogwarts shit going on, but without the magic stuff and you know Dumbledore, she assumes Crusadious is the Slytherin without the wonderful qualities of a genuine Slytherin considering Marylyn is in it.

 

Mrs. Ashford opens her mouth again, probably to wax poetry about her house once again but before she can one of the butlers is swinging the door open and someone is sauntering into the room, and everyone is stilling in their motion, Luke silently tries to chew the chicken in her mouth once the whole room stills in its motion.

 

Luke instantly thinks it is Mr. Ashford, and internally wonders if there is some common courtesy of greeting the asshole who plucked them out of their hometown and put them in this shit, but as the figure comes closer she realizes it’s much younger and much sharper that Luke actually blinks a few times to take all the features in.

 

“Alexander-What a lovely surprise, I thought you wouldn’t be joining us today” Mrs. Ashford recovers quickly, But Luke notes how she doesn’t have that easy excitement in her face anymore.

And looking at the guy she can tell why, he looks pretty damn intimidating with sharp green eyes and a jaw line that seems to be carved by the gods themselves, hell even his brown hair seems to gleaming under the lights of the chandelier (that’s what the chandeliers are for!!!) and the look on his face is the farthest thing from welcoming, he looks good but scary, scary good, huh she what she did there.

 

“The meeting got canceled, would you mind if I joined in?” He asks his voice somehow perfectly fitting into his scary features, it’s smooth and silky like a sweet song but it leaves no space to argue over, seriously what was with this guy.

 

“Please do” Mrs. Ashford says with a smile, but not the openly free one she greeted them with. He only takes a seat after Mrs. Ashford consents, but something about his hardened gaze tells her that he would have done it anyway. Its only when he takes a seat next to Marylyn and she realizes they both have the same hair color that it hits her that he is The Alex, The Alex Ashford Wendell liked to tease her about, this sure as hell was not the guy she remembers, he was fat and chubby and surprisingly gentle for a 10 year old boy. This is- god knows what this is, the closest thing she can compare it to, is a good looking Lionel Ashford which is just eww, so she doesn’t think about it further and pointedly looks away from him.

 

Marylyn seems to share her step mothers opinions too because her face goes a little darker.

The silence stretch on as one of the butler men serves him a plate and the guy glares him thank you, no she is not kidding, he actually glares while thanking him, hey at least he thanks him, that’s a better step than Marylyn’s manners.

Mrs. Ashford clears her thought when the silence goes on for too long.

“Alex I was just about to tell them about you, about how Crusadious finally won the trophy when you were head of house, maybe we will have similar luck with Mare this year” She starts again, smile polite but her posture hesitant.

 

Alexander Ashford stares at the two of them all of a sudden, she suddenly feels pinned and Luke does not do well under heavy stares, especially from scary or scary good looking guys, so she finds a crazy amount of interest in her almost empty plate. 

Alex doesn’t reply to his step mother, just frowns and glare more. Luke had half a mind to whisper to CJ that he is going to turn out to be a similar version of that guy if he continues to scowl and glare at everything like he has been doing since he hit puberty.

 

“Of course Mare is not the Head of House Yet, you don’t technically find out till the opening day which is tomorrow, but we all know it’s going to be her, like they would dare to give somebody else the position when there is an eligible Ashford this year” Mrs. Ashford continues with a proud smile towards Marylyn., quickly recovering from Alex’s blatant form of disrespect. Men were assholes.

“Congrats then” Carrie says for the first time and Luke thinks Marylyn says something along the lines of a thank you but she is not sure, because she is pointedly avoiding looking towards that side of the table because for some reason she can still feel scary Ashford’s eyes on her.

“Anyway, I’ve blabbered on about me and Mare, I am afraid, what about you two, which houses do you think you’ll pick?” Mrs. Ashford asks turning towards them, once again pinning Luke because CJ won’t fucking respond, god she hates her brother. She doesn’t even remembers the weird as hell names Mrs. Ashford said a few minutes ago, and the inner 5 year old in her wants to shout out ‘Hufflepuff’ just to see what happens, she is definitely panicking, so she says the first thing that she remembers from the long speech Mrs. Ashford just gave about the houses.

 

“Probably the all-girls one, it sounds good” She stutters out and internally high fives herself for the amazing save. Marylyn snorts out loud at her words.

 

“Oh, Aphora. It’s a good choice you get a real sense of sisterhood” Mrs. Ashford encourages.

“Yeah that one, Aphora” she tries out just so she would have something to say before pointedly going back to finishing her dinner and hoping to god she doesn’t ask more questions about the houses again.

 

“You don’t look like an Aphora” a new voice interrupts and Luke is honest to go shocked to see it’s Alexander, giving her a glare/frown, (can it be called a frare or grown, not growing kind of grown, the grown that rhymes with crown, which makes her wonder why doesn’t grown rhyme with crown) seriously CJ must be pretty jealous of the guy’s scary expressions and the amazing glare/frown thing that makes Luke feel scrutinized.

 

“Excuse me?” Luke asks because she is polite like that, sometimes (rarely, usually when her mom’s around, because you know Mom).

“Aphora’s are a congregation of narcissistic Barbie dolls each rooting for the other’s fall, the basic girl group, 5 dollar plaid shirts and worn out jeans are not their type” he explains and Luke blinks owlishly just out of the audacity of the stranger’s words, but then again she shouldn’t be surprised considering the welcome she received from his sister, but this time even Mrs. Ashford seems shocked.

Luke is gaping because she doesn’t know where she should begin, but she sure as hell, no matter how intimidating this asshole is, is going to give him a nice long rant about how not to be an asshole.

“That is sexist” CJ adds all of a sudden giving her the preliminary point to work with, most likely remembering that from all the rants she had given her brothers about misogyny and sexism, that’s why she loves her brother, if her blood wasn’t boiling what anger she would be grinning like a puppy at her baby bother all proudly for saying that out loud.

 

“Yes, Let me elaborate. first of all your initial opinion about a girl group is ‘narcissistic Barbie dolls’ which implies that you are under the impression all women are the 'blonde mean girls’ edition who wants to stab each other in the back, which is to put it simply judgmental and close minded opinion of a person who has no close female figure in their life, second you imply that I am not the type, which in turn implies there is a certain type, which is very much untrue, the whole ‘everyone is different and one in a billion’ goes in the case of woman too, that would technically mean each woman is their own type, doesn’t mean that we can’t get along, and I am not even sure what a ‘basic girl group’ is meant to infer, that is misogynistic in at least 20 different context dude. And I love my plaid shirt, I will continue to wear my plaid shirts despite anyone’s opinions, and if you must know it did cost more than 5 dollars, it was a 3 in one deal” she completes and pointedly glares back at him relentlessly.

 

“My apologies if I came of rude” She adds in as an afterthought, mainly to Mrs., Ashford who is gaping at Alex for some reason, and once she does follow her line of sight she realizes why, the guy is smiling, no she is not joking the guy is honest to god smiling at her.

“I am the one who attended Eddridge” he adds in a second later, bringing a piece of chicken to his mouth without breaking his pinning gaze from her face, ugh, how does he even manages that?. He should choke, that will teach him to pay more attention to what he is eating instead of you know scrutinizing the shit out of her with those damning eyes, seriously nothing about this guy was fair.

 

“Were you by any chance in Aphora to know the inner working of the group?” She asks with the same determination.

He shakes his head, No.

“My point stands” she puts in simply before finishing off her plate.

 

“My apologies for being offensive, what I said was clearly out of line, and your plaid shirt looks good, it was a good deal” He adds, simile getting bigger, Maybe his eyes shine for a second, what does that mean?.

“Thank you” She murmurs and looks away once the gaze gets too uncomfortable and hell she is blushing, why the hell is she blushing. What a stupid primitive emotion.

“Now, Have you thought about joining the debate team?” Mrs. Ashford asks…..


	4. Ch-3

Chapter-3

 

Other than the awkward as hell (“It was badass, Luke” says CJ in his grumpy tone with a hint of fondness) confrontation with the oldest Ashford, the rest of the day was pretty peaceful and went without interruptions or annoying Ashford children.

 

She goes to bed soon after dinner which was finished in fair silence after all that, and despite all the problems bugging her mind and missing home to the point that she just wanted to cry or scream at something, she manages to fall asleep within a few minutes; she thinks the exhausting day and the comfortable bed made in Heaven has more to do with that than her mental capabilities to face difficult stuff or handle separation anxiety, but whatever, Luke is not complaining. If a bed made of clouds was what it took to avoid confrontations with her inner turmoil, she was glad that Ashford’s were rich enough to afford those shit in their guest rooms.

CJ join her somewhere in the middle of the night, trudging into her room with his pillow and grumbling something about how both their house and bakery could fit into the room he was staying in and there would still be enough space to make a swimming pool, Luke doesn’t question it considering CJ had shared a room with Wendell for all his life and sleeping without someone’s shadow at the other end would be strange. Luke lets her brother into the giant cocoon she has built for herself and falls asleep like that.

 

Breakfast is relatively low too, mainly because the food is served in their room and they can reasonably enjoy it in peace considering it’s just the two of them, despite the splendor of food Luke is barley able to eat due to the stomach churning anxiety that she is currently fighting, but luckily CJ is more angry rather than anxious so at least he manages to make the best of the breakfast. Once they have gotten ready to head out Carrie greets them by their door with a warm smile and a cherry good morning while holding cup of coffee in her hand, Luke just nods along with a sleepy smile before following Carrie out of the Ashford Estate and into their awaiting cars, ready to take them to Eddridge Academy and you know ruin her innocent life (okay that might be a bit of hyperbole but currently there are a lot of hyperboles when Eddridge or Ashford’s are concerned).

 

“Oh, and Mrs. Ashford sends her apologies and best of luck for the school year, she had to fly out early for some charity thing” Carrie notes as the last of their baggage is being loaded into the limo.

“You mean us wasn’t enough” Luke grumbles out as she politely smiles at the butler who had served them at their stay, she even waves at him although she is most likely to never see the guy again in her life. The guy looks surprised at the gesture but hesitantly waves back at her with a wise smile that only certain people above the age of 40 seems to have.

But suddenly the butler guy is going back to his stern fake polite posture and once Luke looks back she realizes why the sudden change appeared, Demon Ashford was standing right behind her. Luke frowns openly at her presence.

“You got all your stuff?” She asks all of a sudden and Luke just gives her a pointed stare and Marylyn rolls her eyes at it.

“Look I just wanted to make some stuff clear okay” Marylyn starts and Luke can’t help but roll her eyes at her, and boy has she been doing that a lot in her life. She is aware the whole ‘rolling the eye’ thing is a whole stereotypical teenage girl thing, but she lived with 2 brothers okay, anyone who can live with Wen and CJ without rolling their eyes or face palming themselves is a saint brought down from Heaven and should be cherished.

 

“We know, avoid you at all costs, pretend we don’t know each other, you go your way I go mine bla-bla-bla, Thanks I got it” She replies briskly and turns away from her to get to the limo where CJ and Carrie are waiting for her, but before she can there is hand on her solder abruptly stopping her.

“Yes, but I meant about the houses. Despite what Annalise said you can’t pick your house okay? All top houses picks the kids they want and I know I’ll sounds rude and bitchy by saying this but I am just trying to save you the embarrassment, no one but the loser houses are going to pick you. Aphora might not have won the trophy in decades but it is still pretty up the charts, so don’t even think of any other houses other than Magnium or god forbid Callisets. If you don’t trust me feel free to embarrass yourself, but just don’t go for Crusadious, this is my year and unlike my father I can’t afford charity cases in my house” she spits out. She gives Luke another once over with an intense gaze before rolling her eyes and walking away (sashaying away to be more precise) from her with another sneer.

 

Luke blinks. Seriously, what is wrong with that girl? Is she that foreign to human interactions? By this point Luke was so confused about her that she was even starting to feel pity for her, only a little though because Luke didn’t feel pity, she was all tough and hardcore like that despite what her brothers liked to say about her morals.

“Do I even want to know what that was about?” CJ asks when she walks over to them.

Luke opens her mouth, thinks about CJ’s question again and abruptly closes her mouth again, and apparently that’s all the answer he needs because he is getting in the car after a curt nod of acknowledgment towards Carrie, which even though may not seem like much to normal people, is actually a pretty big deal considering CJ had been snapping and glaring at her since this morning, making his feelings about the situation pretty damn clear. It’s nice to know that her brother only takes out his frustration on her, very reassuring.

 

“So umm, yeah-Thanks bye I guess” Luke says to Carrie as not to be a total ass. Carrie smiles kindly and Luke internally thinks how much better it is than all those fake smiles that made her feel bad rather than comfortable, hell she had even stopped calling Carrie ‘Lawyer Lady’ in her head after she had started smiling more sincerely, and it all started by a few seconds of gossiping. Gossips can save lives people, or you know at least a little bit if identity in Carrie’s case.

“It was an absolute pleasure, Come on give me a hug now” Carrie says before swooping in and forcing Luke’s arms around her, now this is actually awkward considering Luke can’t remember hugging someone other than her family in years. So she awkwardly pats Carrie’s back and tries not to look like an idiot as Carrie squeezes her for her dear life.

After that the goodbyes are short and Luke and CJ are on their way to face one giant catastrophe that awaited them under the premise of Eddridge Academy. Its only when Luke is in the car and silently smiling at Carrie she notices the figure standing in the balcony, for a second she doesn’t even realize it is Alexander Ashford without the suit and the well-kept hair, but nevertheless he manages to take her breath away. The last thing she notices before the car zooms away from the Ashford Estates is that Alex Ashford was smiling at her again.

 

****************

 

‘Eddridge Academy of Excellence’ was written in giant bold glimmering letters at the top of Ginormous building (Castle, mansion, Palace, seriously what was this thing?), with similar ginormous buildings (again not sure that’s the word she should use) surrounding it. When Luke had first compared it to Hogwarts it was very much a joke, but now that she was standing in front of the thing (she was going to go with ‘the thing’ because building didn’t seem to hold enough ‘Wow, there is no way this thing is real’ value) she could see how Hogwarts wasn’t a bad comparison, will it be fair to the inner Harry Potter geek in her if she goes as far as to say that this school was even bigger? (Probably not, so she wasn’t going to go there).

 

If the size wasn’t enough, all the other splendor such as the furniture that looked like it came from a catalogue, or the front lawn that looked like a botanical garden, or just the sheer space of the parking lot which looked like an airport was enough to scare the shit out of Luke whose last school barley passed all the government tests to keep running. If Luke wasn’t scared before, now she sure as hell was terrified of going here.

 

School hadn’t technically started yet; it won’t for the next two days. Apparently this was the ‘get to know your friends’ phase before classes started up, or at least that’s what Carrie told them, to Luke and CJ it was just 2 more days of torture and being away from family. The compound was crowded though, but to her utter happiness not a lot of people actually paid attention to them, too busy caught up in their own conversations and the rare few ones that actually managed to look at them sneered or rolled their eyes at them and that was that, which is a very good thing considering Luke was expecting a lot of bullying or pointed conversations rather than the sneers, the sneers were more welcoming than threatening by this point, it seemed none of them had the time for her, and Luke was honestly relived. She knew no attention was much better than any attention from them.

 

“I am starting to hate big things” She murmurs more to herself considering CJ had gone mute, he wasn’t even glaring by this point, it’s like her brother had completely shut off, Luke didn’t like it but she had no idea how to make it better, she herself was barely holding herself together from the urge to just run out of there.

 

“What no reply? Dude I left open the opportunity for at least 10 dick jokes there. Wendell would be disappointed” she tries again with a short nudge to her brother’s shoulder, he keeps on staring at the ground like Luke doesn’t even exist and the carpeted ground holds all the answer to his problems, and although Luke herself would admit that it is a good looking carpet that is nice to stare at but it clearly did not hold the answers to his problems, if it did Luke would be buried inside it by this point.

 

They had been directed into the main building, the one with the name pasted on the front and been asked to wait so someone could give them their schedule and sort out their rooms and shit. From the 5 minutes she has been waiting there in a surprisingly comfy chair, she has figured out that this whole section she was in was just for the high school and there was similar compound containing the younger kids a few miles away, she had heard a lot more about the houses Mrs. Ashford was talking about and something about ‘Head of houses’, there had been a lot about something called Igneous, but then again this was just the staff chatter.

 

By time a few more kids had joined them in the room, Luke guessed they were new kids too, or maybe transfers, did they have transfers here?, and despite CJ’s worries only a few of them were white, most of them seemed to have come from other countries, probably the children of kings and Queens of the said countries, but these were all just mere observations as none of them have bothered to talk to the obviously out of place Luke and CJ. 

 

So Luke did what they were doing, took out her phone and pretended to look busy so that she could ignore them while CJ continued to stare at the ground. She has been swapping through her phone a few minutes before the front screen beeped with a message. Her face lit up hoping it was her mom or Wendell, but her face dimmed once she read ‘Lawyer Lady’ as the saved ID.

LawyerLady: [Hey, Luke. How’s the school so far? Hope it’s great. So I just had a weird encounter with Alexander Ashford, he might have asked me for your contact info and I might have given it to him. I am so sorry, but he is kind of my boss. I am sure he means well.] 

 

Luke frowns after reading the message, she bets Carrie would be smiling ‘fake smile no 2’ if she was telling that to her face, the last sentence was very much similar to what she said about Marylyn being ‘wonderful’ person, but she didn’t have enough time to stress on it because somebody was in front of her with a big smile and a stack of papers.

 

“Hello, I am Casey, head of the welcoming committee-It’s so nice to meet you and we are glad to have you here attending Eddridge” The woman introduces herself with the same fake smile Carrie had on when Luke and CJ first met her. Casey doesn’t look young enough to be attending a high school, so Luke assumes she is a faculty member.

 

Casey even with all her fake enthusiasm sits with them and patiently explains to them how things work, she gets out a map and marks all the area where both CJ and Luke has classes, further points out the cafeteria where all meals will be served (“for free” she adds and Luke realizes she already knew they were the charity cases this year), she also tells them about the communal area such as the gym, the recreational park or the museum that are built exclusively for the students. There are 10 libraries at this place and a few indoor cafes and food areas, over all its all too over the top, luxurious and clearly unnecessary.

 

But the most confusing and complicated process of it all is the stay, Luke would have assumed the first thing they would set up for the new kids will be their rooms so they could just crash after traveling so long, but it seems Eddridge doesn’t get a lot of new kids (at least at the high school level from what she can see) because they needed to be assigned a house before their boarding is decided, and for that they had to go and mingle (no seriously, the lady used the word ‘mingle’) at the Inaugural ceremony where representative of each houses were present.

They needed to obtain a seal and signature of the Head of House of whichever house they choose, or chooses them considering Marylyn’s words. Overall it was exhausting and annoying and Luke realizes why their luggage was left in the car with their driver. Casey is kind enough to take them to where the event is being held, she tells them that they have more than enough time to pick a house and once they have done that to come meet her at the front desk so she could assign them a room.

 

After than Luke had no idea what to do, there are a lot of people there unlike the room she was stuck in so she assumes not all of them could be new kids, once she does move around she can see the large flashy sighs pasted here and there with strange names written on it in bold letters, much similar to the big sign a top of the school. There is crowd of kids under each sign wearing a black jacket, which is their uniform; it seems each has different stalls to represent their houses, each varying in size, but all seemingly bigger than a small cafe.

 

She already knows about the uniform thing and how a large black coat with the emblem of the school was considered as the official uniform of Eddridge Academy, it was an act brought on a few years ago by a group of girls who spoke out against girls being forced to wear skirts and how the mid gender’s could not identify themselves when there was a clear gender descriptive differentiation in the uniform , it was apparently one of the first schools in America to set forward such changes with the passing of general coat and set of strict uniform codes that went for both girls and boys without discrimination, it was the one and only thing that Luke liked about the school. It seemed to actually hold gender equality even if it was within the rich only.

“Don’t pick Aphora, it’s all girls, I can’t get in” CJ says all of a sudden his eyes still not looking away from the pamphlet Casey had given them with a brief description of the different houses.

 

“You can pick whatever house you want you know, you don’t have to follow me CJ” she informs her brother but CJ just gives her a look that said Luke was speaking in a language that he did not understand, which meant that he was going to follow Luke in this decision and if she did pick a shitty house he will blame her for the rest of his god forsaken life and then some more in the afterlife, which was just annoying because she had the worst decision making skills in history and she did not do well under pressure and CJ was being an annoying as hell pressure right now. But Luke doesn’t voice it out; she just sighs and holds it together for the sake of both of them. 

Ugh, the struggles of being an older sister.

“Come on, let’s check it out then” she says as she buries both her hands into her jacket pocket and luckily CJ nods, which is basically a motivational speech in the current mood CJ is in.

The first house they see is Zxenna, and its then she realizes the color coding of the whole place. First of all the jackets wasn’t completely black, all The Zxenna kids had a glimmering blue lining to their jackets, and a smiling girl who she assumes is the Head of House for that Zxenna had a similar blue in color badge on her chest on top of the jacket, and the ones who weren’t wearing the said jacket had at least one clothing with the similar deep blue on it. 

And as she walks on she realizes that each house had their own color, Aphora had pink (which stereotypical much?), Igneous had red, Aurioum had white (or is it silver considering each had glitzy color to it) and further on. In fact some kids she had seen waiting with her at the room were now even walking around with Blue or Green similar ribbons wrapped around their wrist.

Despite her worries nobody bothered them, the place was crowded enough to get by without others noticing them and it seemed all the other kids were too busy messing around with their own house mates to pay anyone else who did not approach their house directly any attention, and Luke appreciated that because she didn’t want anyone talking to her right now. They didn’t approach any house either; they walked with a fair distance between them and the other kids. Luke would hate to admit this, but their first encounter with Marylyn had clearly left a bad impression and she was more than a little nervous to actually approach anybody after that disaster, despite all her bravado nobody liked to be made a fool of, at least not in giant crowds. 

 

Luke is suddenly brought to a halt when CJ grips her elbow, he points towards the Crusadious section once he had her attention. At first Luke doesn’t see anything other than a cluster of green, laughing and giggling at each other, the same sight she had seen a few minutes ago when she was checking out Crusadious and the model building of their dorm which they had displayed at the front along with all their achievements like the rest of the houses, but then she takes a closer look and realizes the person wearing the Head of House badge was a strange guy and Marylyn was nowhere to be seen.

 

“Ah, I guess there was no ‘eligible’ Ashford in Eddridge this year then” Luke remarks thinking of Mrs. Ashford’s words, but she internally feels a little sorry for Marylyn too despite her bitchiness, from what she understood at the previous day’s dinner the whole Head of the House thing seemed pretty important to her.

 

“Better luck to her next year” She murmurs out loud before they started walking again.

“There is no next year, only seniors can be the head of House” he answers her back even though she wasn’t expecting a reply from him.

“How’d you know that?” She wondered and he lifts up the pamphlet Casey gave him about the houses. Luke shrugs. But before they can continue on a huge shadow is surounding them and somebody is literally plucking out the pamphlet her brother held just a second ago.

“Oh Look Bro, This shit. I haven’t seen this in years. Ah newbies! Trust me this is useless, all you need to know is Igneous is the best house there ever is, everything else is fucking shit” A guy shouts, he is pretty huge as compared to the both of them. And that is saying something considering all the Kaselings are pretty gangly and long limbed, this guy almost towered over them in height and weight. He has an obnoxious laugh and smells like he is drunk (it’s midday by the way).

The ‘bro’ he was talking to turns around, he is pretty built too but nothing like the first, but his predacious smile instantly makes Luke vary of him.

 

“Indeed it is mate, Igneous for life” the ‘bro’ chants his full gaze focused on Luke, searching her from head to toe. As if to further punctuate his point, he is wearing a red shirt while the bulky one has the black, red outlined jacket on. She also notes ‘Bro’ has a British accent

 

“I think we’ll decide that ourselves” CJ spits out before he lifts his hands to take the pamphlet from ‘Big and bulky’. ‘Big and bulky’ pulls it further away and laughs at CJ’s failed attempt to retrieve it, ah great; they are back to middle school again then. Luke really wants to roll her eyes at the immature display or douchebag-ness, luckily her brother has more brain than the two of them combined so he stops after the second attempt and focuses his glare on them.

“Just give it back man” she asks a second later and ‘bro’ and ‘Big and bulky’ turns to each other and smirks, definitely back to middle school then.

“When you put it like that gorgeous, how can we say no” Bro drawls on patronizingly with a curt nod to big and bulky.

‘Big and Bulky’ smirks and rips out the pamphlets into a few piece before blowing them at CJ’s face and laughing, Luke quickly has a grip on CJ before he does something irrational.

“Wow, look at that CJ, the very definition of masculinity, ripping out paper for no reason at all. This is what too much testosterone does to the brain” Luke says sarcastically before CJ can react, it seems they do have half a brain because ‘Big and bulky’s smile drops but ‘bro’s smile just gets more predacious as he smirks at her.

“What about you, darling? Why won’t you come with me for a little while and we can talk about maybe getting you a seat at the igneous hazing?” ‘Bro’ asks as he comes closer, his breath fanning over her nose and she instantly ducks away because eww brush your teeth often?. He asks it as if it’s some big deal like getting a hazing seat- whatever that was- could maybe be a cure to cancer.

“Dude you have like the worst taste in girls, you just wanna get laid!” Big and Bulky shouts from the side as if she wasn’t standing just there and CJ promptly heats up next to her. Luke chooses to pretend not to have heard that because looking at ‘big and bulky’ makes her want to punch something, preferably his god for saken face and you know it’s her frost day, and she has no idea what happens if she don’t get into an house, so she needs at least half a good impression, and she highly doubts punching the moron was gonna bring her good cred.

“Are you by any chance in Igneous?” she asks directly turning to ‘bro’ although she already knew he was, Bro smirks.

“Indeed I am” he says in what she supposes is a seductive manner (it’s not, it really isn’t)

“Well I would rather die then, considering standing this close to you in nauseating, and dude ever heard of personal hygiene? brush your teeth sometimes, you breath can probably be used as weedicide, and good luck to your house, it’s going to need all the luck it needs with you dimwits in it and we have at least 3 times the brain and decency than you two do, so no thank you, It’s a no to Iguana today, Bye-Bye” she says briskly with a quick wave before she grabs CJ and walks away.

She only gets a second to take in their expression, they look pretty damn furious though so she considers that as a win.

“It’s Igneous” Bro tells to their turned back

“I would care. But if only I had the fucks to give” she turns around to say before leaving them both gaping.

“You didn’t need to do that. I can take care of myself” CJ says like all 15 years would have said at some stupid point of their life.

“They insulted me dude” she says simply and luckily he leaves it at that.

If only she knew what she had just started at that very moment….


	5. Ch-5

Chapter-4

 

They walk around for a few more minutes until they get to the end of the line, and there in a corner is the two houses Marylyn had ‘suggested’ to her the morning, and true to her word they both have the smallest stalls of them all in a corner with not more than 3 people wearing black and orange, or black and gold jackets manning the stalls.

 

Initially when Marylyn said it Luke had the urge to do the exact opposite of what she said just for the hell of it, but now that she did see all of the houses and how different these two were when compared to all of the others she was rethinking, mainly because these two were quite, no one was around other than the kids managing the stall. It seemed dull and boring and to be honest Luke could ask for nothing more in her last year of high school.

 

Igneous was obviously out of the question mainly because of the events of 5 minutes ago with ‘bro’ and ‘big and bulky’, she already had enough of Marylyn so Crusadious was out too, Aphora and Aurioum where gender specific and CJ had already made it clear that he didn’t want to split, the only choice they had kept in their mind was Zxenna mainly because Mrs. Ashford was a Zxenna and she was fairly nice, but it was high end team to and as Marylyn said, might not want them back. So that left Callisets and Magnium, the said loser houses and currently Luke and CJ give or take were in this case a bit if the losers.

It was perfect for them it seemed.

“Let’s pick one of em” CJ echoed her opinion and Luke grinned mainly because they have finally manifested some sibling powers with the recent same thoughts they have been having.

“Which one?” she gave him the choice.

“Your pick”

“You do know you are the one who has to spent longer time here than I do right?” She asks and he just shrugs. So Luke blinks and heads for the house with the least number of people.

“Hi, we’d like to join in” she said in her best polite voice to the guy in the Callisets booth.

The guy blinks at her a few times, for some reason his black hair had blue streaks on it (she internally dubs him Smurf) which is cool as his eyes are a similar shade of blue too, and honestly he is the only person who looked a little chaotic out of the long list of pristine and precise she had seen that day, Luke liked chaotic, chaotic reminded her of her home.

“What?” Smurf barks out at her, his expression annoyed and angry and Luke feels stupid for thinking that this guy would be any different than the rest of them.

So she opens the bag on her shoulder and pulls up the papers Casey gave her where the signature and seal of the house was supposed to be and points to it, but she also notices that this guy did not have badge on.

“We would like to join in please” she repeats again, slowly this time. The guy glares; CJ glares right back for her, Smurf rolls his eyes at them before opening up a laptop that was at his side and moving the mouse pad around so it would lighten up.

“Which house are you hazing for?” he asks in a bored tone.

“Excuse me?” She asks because what the hell is hazing again. The guy sighs again like Luke and CJ are the last person he wants to see on earth.

“You know ‘Hazing’, your primary house? or houses you have on your list” Smurf asks again quickly growing exasperated with her.

“Primary house?” she repeats again like an absolute idiot. Smurf would have steam coming out of his ears if this was a cartoon.

“Oh my god how stupid can you be” Smurf whispers under his breath along with some incorrigible shit they can’t understand, it might even be in a different language.

“Maybe it’s because we have no idea what the fuck you are talking about” CJ interjects all of a sudden, his full wrath projected on Smurf. Smurf instantly shrinks at his glare, which is surprising considering nobody is ever actually scared of CJ despite all his glaring and growling, he was more of an angry puppy than anything else that is actually you know, threatening and stuff.

“You are joining in as Back up House right? You know like a last resort just in case you don’t get in others-The after hazing period deal?” he explains.

“Um-This is kind of the only house we have approached. Do we have to go through this hazing thingy? What is hazing again” Luke asks genuinely confused.

This time the guy actually looks shocked.

“You are not hazing?” he asks as if she is from another planet.

“Do we have to?” she asks.

“Uh-No-No, I there is not hazing period in Callisets or Magnium, technically there is no hazing anywhere considering it’s against the policy but Igneous does it so everybody else does it and no one calls them out on their bullshit- Oh shit, you actually mean it-I am so sorry-I just, Amara” He shouts all of a sudden and out of nowhere (from the backdoor) a blonde girl with a cheery smile pops up, and a closer inspection shows the golden Head of House badge.

“They want to join, as genuine members” Smurf informs her and the other girl after a second of surprise beams at them, her smile getting even wider (how is that even possible?)

“Oh, that’s perfect. I knew this would happen. Didn’t I tell you Ber? I totally told you, I told you like a billion times, and you shunned me down Haha, Hi, I am sorry, I am Amara Cromwell, the official hoe of the amazing Callisets, Dulcis Domus, that’s us” she grins with a small pirouette thingy at the end. 

“Ugh, Hoe?” Luke asks because for some reason that’s the first thing that came to her mind. Smurf actually smiles, and look at that Smurf has dimples, cute.

“It’s H-O-H, Head of House you know, but for some reason everyone prefers HOH, it sounds like hoe” Smurf explains with an apologetic smile and Luke smiles back mainly because CJ is still glaring and she don’t want him to feel that intimidated.

“I can’t imagine why” Luke remarks.

“Neither can I really, but we just go with it. I’ll need you names please” He asks a second after he clicks something on his laptop and looks at her expectantly. The polite smile on his face now that Amara was here was mesmerizing.

“Um I am Luke-Ugh Luciana Kaseling and Camden-James Kaseling” she gives their full name and her records to Smurf, so he can easily type out their name without any mistakes.

“Whoa, you guys have cool middle names” Smurf notes and gives the file back in record timing after adding the necessary information into the laptop he was holding, seriously this guy is good.

“it’s bit of ancestral culturefuck” she answers

“Tell me about it, my name is Berthold Azoff, Germen family. What your brother doesn’t talk?” Berthold (she was gonna stick to Smurf, Smurf fit him much better) asks a second later with a curious look at CJ, CJ glares harder as if just referring to him was a great sin.

“Not unless he is defending my honor No” she replies freely and CJ directs his glare at her.

“Aww, that is so cute, I always wanted a baby bro. I never had one. Parents right, what can you do?” Amara tells her happily as she makes grabby hands at the papers she has to sign.

“Amara wait. Are you guys sure about this? You guys look new and completely clueless about the inner workings of this school and as much as we’d like genuine members I must tell you being a Calliset is not easy, we are kind of the gum in the bottom of shoes for those assholes. Things are not gonna be easy at all” Smurf informs them genuinely and despite the first impression Luke instantly likes him.

“Dude we are the charity cases from half way across the country, pretty sure things are not going to be easy for us anyway, so you know strength in numbers and all, and in all honestly I don’t think anyone would want us either” Luke says as she passes the papers to the grinning hoe (or HOH-whatever she was going to use hoe, there are so many jokes there).

“Then we are perfect for each other then, Ah I already love you guys” Amara exclaims happily as she gets to work, and Luke watches as Amara signs each paper with utmost precious precision like she doesn’t want to ruin and inch of it, the sign comes that way too, clear-cut and elegant.

By the time she gives it back, Luke thinks she has tears in her eyes, and it’s such a change from Marylyn that Luke can’t help but let out a relived grin.

“I always wanted to sign this thing-It’s pretty emotional-I always thought it would be transfer papers for me. Oh, you know what let me show you the Callisets dorm on the way, that way ill get your room number and stuff. Oh wait, what if somebody else wants to join in like you guys did, ah then I guess I can’t go” Amara exclaims happily and then frowns by the end of it only to start smiling again.

“It’s pretty permanent you know” Smurf warns again as if Luke grinning happily is not what he expected. Amara looks at him, betrayed at his words and mumbles something about being such a pessimist.

“You guys are not a front for a secret Satan worshipping cult or anything are you? I don’t understand why you are so vary” Luke wonders out loud.

“No, but we are the house that has never managed to win the trophy in at least the last century and has been coming at the very Bottom at least for the last 3 decades, we kind of suck a lot and the rest of the all mighty houses like to shove that in our faces” Smurf explains.

“He is just being annoying, don’t listen to him, our house is awesome” Amara says and even if she is lying it’s hard to believe so because she believes in her words so much.

Smurf snorts.

“Our own members don’t like our house, the 3rd graders entering the school cry when they are sorted to Callisets” Smurf continues and Luke can’t help but think how well CJ and Smurf would get along with their total negativity and glaring skills.

“Well it will all change because I am the HOH this year, I can change things around, I can inspire people” Amara says with such confidence that Luke would think she is a spirit animal, she might be with the way she is basically glowing.

“You have no friends but me Amara, and everybody in our house hates you” He deadpans and Luke watches as Amara blushes and shuts up, it seems Luke and CJ have managed to find the lowest among the richest, as she said perfect for them.

“Wow, Look CJ I think you just found your soulmate” Luke says out loud just to save Amara the embarrassment, CJ glares at all of them, Amara laughs out loud as she makes the connection, Smurf if she is not mistaken blushes.

“So what Callisets is the house with the least number of people?” CJ finally opens his mouth, probably just to do something other than glare, but the angry tone just further punctuates her point.

“On the contrary actually, out of all the houses we have the most members” Amara says proudly.

“It’s just that 95% of the members are in Callisets because no other house wanted them, the ones in the bottom of the food chain, and not the normal food chain either, anybody who exceeds in any field will be taken up by the other teams, be it be nerd, geeks or loners, it’s just that the ones at Callisets are the literal definition of losers, so for that reason we don’t win at anything” Smurf explains in the same depressing monotone.

“Oh, is that what the whole hazing thing is about?” Luke wonders

“Yep, it goes on for three days with their ‘preferred’ houses, but they always keep Magnium or Callisets as their backup houses and once all the other houses have picked who they want the rest who no one wants comes to us” Smurf says with a bitter glare, but it’s not directed at them.

“Why don’t you just reject those then?” CJ wonders without the angry tone that laces his voice most of the time.

“We can’t, there is a minimum allotment that we have to fill every year and the odds are you guys are going to be the only voluntary –first choice-members this year, and even once our minimum capacity is i filled, management usually just shove everyone else who doesn’t have a house on us or Mag because the others are too damn precious for them to upset” Smurf explains.

“Besides, Dulcis Domus you know, we can’t just reject people” Amara adds in with her thousand watt smile.

“Dulcis Domus is our house quote, Amara likes to pretend it’s a motto, it’s not, it just means sweet home in English” Smurf drawls reading Luke’s and CJ’s confused expressions.

“No ‘Sweet Home’ implies that we are a family, and you don’t turn back on family” Amara says.

“Oh, god here you go quoting Disney movies again” Smurf rolls his eyes.

“So do all houses have this motto thing?” Luke asks because by this point she is genuinely curious.

“Oh yeah, well most of em, only us and Aphora still keep our original Latin words that was written on our house centuries ago, the rest are all modified somehow, Igneous had ‘Ignition to glory’, Crusaders are something dumb like ‘moving in our way’, they don’t take it all that seriously” Amara clarifies.

“No one takes it seriously” Smurf mumbles.

“So how come you guys are here if it’s technically the worst house?” Luke asks and hopes she isn’t being too invasive, she really likes these two, she will go far as to say that she might have found a few friends mainly because they seems just as desperate as she is but she doesn’t want to screw it up by opening her mouth.

But it seems it was a good question to ask because they both turned to each other and smiles all adorably.

“Amara was actually a Zxenna till high school, she was all ’I wanna make a change’ and joined in here nothing happened, life sucked for her so next year I joined into keep her company, we have both been stuck ever since” Smurf says that smile still intact.

“Nobody asked you to” Amara grumbles and it’s such a negative emotion in such a butterfly like Amara.

“You would have died without me, that’s the reason she is HOH this year, because she was the only one who joined voluntarily like you guys in her freshmen year, ugh that means I’ll probably be the next one, god I hate my life” he says and Amara keeps a loving arm on his shoulder, they made a cute couple.

“We should probably head out with this” Luke says with a pointed nod to the papers in her hands.

There were already a bunch of kids looking about CJ’s age staring intensely at Magnium and Callisets, probably as a backup house from the way there were favoring Magnium.

“Oh wait before you go, official wristbands, the temporary one’s get ribbons, we don’t hand out ribbons though” Amara shouts out gleefully before emerging with a few golden colors wrist band (their colors were gold and black, how awesome was that, she didn’t understand why people didn’t go for Callisets just because of the color scheming)

“Oh god, do you want them to get bullied Amara?” Smurf asks, but Luke notices that he himself is wearing one. Luke and CJ graciously accepts the bands and ties it on, the words Dulcis Domus is glimmering on it and it has a cool black leather lining in the inside, so it will go great with their uniform.

“I designed it myself, you can get your official uniform tomorrow” She smiles.

“It’s pretty cool” CJ admits and Luke needn’t say any more than that because Amara is gleaming at CJ’s approval.

Much, much later that day at night, once they have entered the Callisets house (which true to Amara’s word had Dulcis Domus painted across the very front gate all elegantly) their rooms had been sorted, luggage’s delivered, essentials unpacked and Luke tucked away in her bed, someone knocks on her door. 

Expecting it to be CJ Luke is more than surprised to see a gleaming Amara in PJs holding a few bags and yelling at the top of her voice how she had switched her room and now the two of them were going to be roommates. This time Luke falls easy into the unexpected hug Amara throws around, and feels so damn grateful for at least one rich person existing who was the very opposite of Marylyn. Amara keeps yelling until her neighbor shouts at them.

 

Luke for once feels like believing her mother’s ‘everything is going to be fine’ since accepting the fact that she’ll have no choice but to go to the academy, so Luke smiles and lets life come at her.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, dear reader- person who stumbled into my world of cheesy Rom Com fiction which I seemed to suck the least at. Thanks for the read and please don’t hesitate to shoot me a message or discuss about world domination, I promise ill help.


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